Si*eFX Hou*ini FX 15.5.632 (x64) | 666.4 Mb
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Hou*ini 15.5 *elivers great pro*uction-inspire* features both to our establishe* community an* our emerging user base. There's a lot more inclu*e* than in a typical point release, as we've been able to finalize a wi*e range of features well ahea* of our major release sche*ule.
Mo*el
Hou*ini has tra*itionally offere* strong proce*ural mo*eling sometimes at the expense of its interactive workflow. With improvements ma*e in Hou*ini 14 an* now 15, mo*ellers are now able to work intuitively in the viewport with the new tweak e*it workflow, e*ge sli*ing, soft selection highlighting an* new tools such as PolyBri*ge an* PolyExpan* 2D. For working with hi-res mo*els, new retopology tools make it easy to buil* low-res geometry by *rawing right on top of high-res geometry.

Ren*er
Ren*ering in Hou*ini 15 is faster an* richer with improvements to the Mantra ren*erer such as checkpointing an* ren*er view fee*back. Sha*er buil*ing has been enhance* with a new sha*er library, a rebuilt Sha*er FX 2.0 menu, layere* materials an* a cartoon sha*er.
Hou*ini 15 also inclu*es an implementation of Disney's physically-base* Principle* Sha*er which is *esigne* to provi*e artistic flexibility with a minimal set of controls. In a**ition, a library of royalty-free PBR Rea*y Textures will be available on si*efx.com for use with Hou*ini 15's sha*er buil*ing tools.
Material stylesheets create a pro*uction-level workflow for creating an* managing material overri*es that work well with Alembic files an* packe* geometry. Easily set up ran*om textures an* variances in material settings to give a unique look to a collection of similar items such as crow* agents.

What's New
in version 15.5:
Geometry
New
Rewrote PolyBevel SOP to *o state-of-the-art beveling.
Rewrote Polysplit SOP with better interactive insertion of e*ges an* e*ge loops.
Rewrote Dissolve SOP to be more intuitive, faster, an* more reliable.
Delta Mush *eformer smooths arbitrary *eformations applie* to a polygonal mesh, without smoothing out the *etail of the original mo*el.
PolyExpan*2D now supports variable wi*th offsets an* primitive attributes. This is important for roa* generation an* roofing offsets.
TopoBuil* has new tools for splitting polygons an* brushing to move or smooth points.
Improve*
Better/tighter packing of UV islan*s in the UV Layout SOP.
Faster saving of large polygon soups un*er some con*itions, most notably IPR ren*ers.

User experience
New
You can now copy an* paste multiple rows an* columns in the Parameter Sprea*sheet. You can use this to copy all channel references on a no*e to another no*e at once.
The viewport now shows *isplacements for surfaces with a GL Displacement map parameter. See the Open GL ROP an* on the Effects tab of the 3D Display options. This feature requires OpenGL 4.0.
New option for Euler tumbling in the viewport allows you to tumble the view over the poles.
Double-click for e*ge loop selection.
Double-click points or primitives in the viewport to select connecte* geometry.
Improve*
Cleaner help layout an* improve* search.
- You can switch the *isplay of lists of items such as HOM metho*s an* environment variables to alphabetical or*er.
- The search now shows "inline" results for no*es, VEX functions, HOM functions/metho*s, HScript comman*s an* expressions, an* common attributes.
- A list of categories to the left of search results lets you filter the results quickly.
Various han*le UI improvements inclu*ing the *isplay of an outer ring for rotating aroun* the current view axis, the ability to turn off negative axis *rawing of translate han*les, an* the *isplay small *raggable translate planes away from the center of the han*le. For information, see Using han*les.
Improvements to the File Chooser.
Better geometry snapping, inclu*ing the ability to snap to X-ray geometry.
HOM interface for Flipbooking. For more information see hou.FlipbookSettings.
Fixe*
Overlapping multi-selections in Dopesheet an* Playbar.

Crow*s
New
New foot planting workflow supporte* by new parameters on various no*es.
Transition graphs let you specify multi-clip transitions at specific frames between agent states.
You can now *irectly import or ren*er FBX characters as agents.
A**e* many new controls to the Crow* State DOP for animation clips, such as options for a*justing the clip an*/or locomotion spee*, retiming behavior, an* allowe* spee* variance.
The new Agent Terrain A*aptation SOP lets you a** terrain a*aptation to animate* agents after a simulation, or use it for simple crow* shots that *on't involve simulation.
New Agent CHOP imports clips from an agent primitive into CHOPs.
New Mocap Bipe* 3 character on the Character shelf tab. This character has better walk cycles, making it useful to test the new foot-planting features.
Hou*ini now uses vertex normals when *eforming agent shapes. This is particularly useful for FBX files, since they typically have vertex normals.
A**e* support for baking a**itional (non-transform) channels into agents' animation clips. The new Foot Plant CHOP uses this to a** channels *escribing when a foot is plante*.
Change*
New versions of the Crow* Solver, Crow* State DOP, Crow* Transition DOP, Crow* Source SOP, Agent Prep SOP, an* Agent Terrain A*aptation DOP.
The new versions move, rename, an* reorganize some parameters to make the behavior of an* interaction between the parameters clearer.
The Crow* Source SOP is now optional. Any require* attributes are initialize* by the crow* solver if they *on't alrea*y exist.
Re*esigne* parameter interface for crow*s
A**e* support for agents that *o not face *own +Z an*/or are not Y-up.
The Agent Configure Joints SOP can now automatically compute initial joint limits from an agent's animation clips.
Improve*
Crow* steering behavior, which re*uces sli*ing an* spinning for agents.
Support for locomotive clips, specifically looping an* transitioning between locomotive clips.
Usability an* robustness of the crow* shelf tools.
Terrain a*aptation an* support for foot locking.
Enhance* clip-*riven transition controls for crow*s.

Lighting an* ren*ering
New
VR lens sha*er, which supports stan*ar* projection mo*es (latlong/cubemap), as well as control over eye separation an* eye/neck *istance. The Oculus Rift hea*set is being use* to vali*ate the output image format. A Perspective mo*e has also been a**e* to the sha*er, to allow ren*ering of stereo pairs.
There is now curvature support for UV Bake. This is *one with a new Curvature VOP that provi*es various properties of surface curvature, such as Gaussian, mean, convexity, concavity, an* magnitu*e. Curvature can be use* to a** wear to surfaces, an* as a control mask for *irt an* rust. An output is now available on the VR lens sha*er for this type of sha*ing.
Depth of Fiel* an* Motion Blur are now available in the OpenGL ROP.
Thir* party ren*ering in Hou*ini In*ie.
You can now a** a Photon mo*ifier property to objects to control how Mantra traces photons through the scene.
New UV Triplanar Projection VOP lets you project repeating textures onto geometry easily.
SOHO output *rivers have a Ren*er to Disk in Backgroun* button. This works like all other Ren*er ... in Backgroun* buttons, requiring a save* .hip file to work properly.
Change*
The Bake Sha*er has been remove*, with the functionality being move* into the VR lens sha*er. This means that any image plane can be bake*, as oppose* to be limite* to a fixe* set of planes.
Bake sha*ing controls have been move* from the Bake Texture ROP to stan*ar* sha*ers, which means bake settings can be a*juste* on a per-object basis.
Improve*
HQueue performance optimizations. The web interface an* RPC are significantly more responsive.
Optimize* tree view picker for the Alembic SOP
Alembic ROP's exporting of packe* fragment primitives.
The point replicate proce*ural now has an option to unpack the template geometry.
Fixe*
You can now ren*er extra "overscan" image *ata outsi*e the *isplay win*ow in image formats that support it (for example .pic an* .exr). This extra image *ata may be useful to other software such as Nuke.

Hair, Fur, an* Grooming
New
You can now change selections within a single Curve Groom SOP.
A Length Scale parameter on the Appearance tab of the Fur Object allows for small post groom a*justments.
UDIM support for hair sha*er textures.
Parameter to control which attributes to keep on external gui*es.
Hair sha*er asset. The hair material in the gallery an* the Fur object both use this, so from now on they will be in sync.
Improve*
When the current object is a fur object or you are insi*e a fur object, the skin painting tools will use that object without asking for a selection.
Restore* stroke caching in the Curve Groom SOP.
Fixe*
Fixe* a bug where attributes calle* "prim" an* "primuv" were create* on external gui*es when Snap to Skin was on.
Fixe* a bug where creating a new Curve Groom no*e using one of the grooming shelf tools (for example using Ctrl+Click or after selecting a *ifferent set of primitives) copie* invisible parameters, which coul* cause cache* gui*e geometry to be transferre* to the new SOP.

Scripting
New
You can now script the creation of flipbooks. See hou.FlipbookSettings.